The Chichibu distillery in the Saitama Prefecture of Japan is the brainchild of Ichiro Akuto, who founded the distillery in 2008. The first new distillery built in Japan since the 1970s, Chichibu is rather small but produced some mightily marvellous malts, with a good helping of peat warmth behind some of them. A portion of the barley Chichibu uses is grown locally, and they use a wide selection of cask styles to mature the whisky. Their first release - the aptly named Chichibu The First - made its way to shelves in 2011, and though subsequent releases have been somewhat infrequent, they have been well received.